


A Bedeviling Friendship

by Savnarae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 05:17:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13241232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savnarae/pseuds/Savnarae
Summary: Early in Mercy's career with Overwatch, she is beset by challenges to the development of the Valkyrie suit. Late one night, she is visited by her colleague Moira, who offers a rather chilling solution to her latest predicament...





	A Bedeviling Friendship

The heavy clink of ceramic on metal startled Angela awake, followed closely by the sound of Moira’s soft, dark laughter. A mug of coffee had been set on the lab table before her. A long, thin hand rested gently on the tired doctor's shoulder as she sat up, unaware that she had been asleep. 

“At some point, you ought to let me install a port, Doctor Ziegler. Perhaps here,” Moira tapped the base of Angela’s neck, just above the collar of her coat, “directly into the spine. Absolutely no one who knew you would question a permanent caffeine drip. We’ll mount it directly to the wing of your Valkyrie suit…”

Angela smiled quietly and reached for the mug as she looked up at her visiting senior colleague. 

“Thank you, Doctor O’Deorain, I’ll be sure to submit an application for the procedure in the morning,” she replied with a small laugh, sipping. The warmth spread pleasantly through her. Strong but sweet, exactly as she preferred it. She hadn’t meant to doze off, and she was grateful to be awoken to continue her work.

Moira took a drink as well from her own mug, then leaned gently over Angela’s shoulder, resting the slightest weight on the woman’s back as she peered at the notes and diagrams scattered about. 

“What keeps you up tonight, Angela?” she asked with an amused curiosity. 

“Power generation,” Doctor Zeigler replied, pushing the papers toward the interested woman. “Well, re-generation.” She didn’t mind the contact between them. It was a mannerism she’d come to expect from the senior scientist, a friendly gesture. 

“The Caduceus staff alone runs well enough on the suit’s integrated supplies,” she continued, “but it cannot be run concurrently with the flight system, and the wings drain the batteries tremendously. I’m struggling with ways to increase overall efficiency to preserve as much power as I can, as the Valkyrie’s supply recharges so slowly.” 

Moira shuffled through a few of the offered notes, her eyes skipping about Angela’s neat handwriting and crisp sketches. 

“A worthy challenge,” she remarked lightly, turning her back to the bench to lean gently as she drew a few choice papers between her lengthy fingers.

“And you, Doctor?” Angela asked, taking another sip. "What brings you here, so very late as well?" 

“Oh, you know. The rabbits are sleeping,” Moira replied without looking up, waving her mug carefully but dismissively. She smirked at the notes as she read, aware of Angela's gaze.

The young doctor laughed again. Moira often gave that answer as an excuse for visiting. It meant nothing useful or descriptive, but it had become something of a joke between the two of them by this point. It was a fine enough idiom for a pause in her work, either through preference or necessity.

“Will you ever tell me what you do here?” she asked.

Moira continued to smirk faintly. “It wouldn’t interest you, Angela. And you have plenty of your own research to keep your focus.” 

“But that’s hardly fair. You worry about mine and yours, yet you won't allow me to return the courtesy?"

Moira laughed quietly to herself. “Trust me, Doctor Ziegler. Your work is worth your full attention.” 

“And you have never been stymied late at night, hoping for a breakthrough?” 

“I have.” Moira looked up finally, her curious orange eye studying her companion. “However, to rest my mind I choose to visit colleagues bearing coffee, rather than falling asleep on my textbooks as a first year might.” 

Angela laughed. “So cruel, you are.” 

Moira regarded her with amusement, smirking darkly as she returned to the notes. 

The two had been coworkers for a few months now, ever since Angela Ziegler had joined the Overwatch collective, and they had become fast friends. Moira had taken quickly to a new and fresh mind in the Overwatch research division, welcoming her warmly, encouraging and assisting her research when the busy scientist had a moment here and there. Angela, for her part, found Moira so far to be a very amiable and clever, brilliant woman, full of life and personality and an entertaining, intelligent--though sometimes dark--sense of humor. She had a passionate drive for her own work, and an earnest interest in the research of others, as well. She visited often and seemed to have a presence everywhere, dropping in on open meetings, bringing coffee and treats to converse over as she did now, and frequently inviting one or two others out for lunch to discuss ideas and the world. She had a grand plan for the advancement of humanity that inspired Angela, but the details of her methods were always a closely-guarded secret. 

“Can you explain this calculation to me, Doctor? There’s a discrepancy here I haven't fully grasped…” 

Moira shared the notes she was studying, and Angela took the paper and scanned the lines indicated. 

“Oh! Yes. Here. This should help.” She rifled through her other sheets and extracted a few, offering them to the woman beside her, and began to explain. 

“The nanobiology of the staff, as it is, has an amplifying effect on tissue, in regards to the amount of power it uses. It really is a wonder, and a key point I might be forced to return to if I cannot find a better way to reduce the flight systems consumption. I don’t think I can squeeze much more efficiency out of the staff, however. Currently, it has about a one-to-four ratio of power to effect, but I seem to have hit a wall.” 

Moira listened quietly with a slow, repetitive nod of agreement as she read and took another sip of coffee. She didn’t reply, but Angela watched her with a silent amusement. The more she studied, the sharper and more focused her attention grew. She was immediately hooked into her colleague’s latest intellectual speed bump, sufficiently distracted from whatever sleeping rabbits she suffered from tonight, and ever so casually, Angela rose from her seat and walked away, nonchalantly mentioning she was off to the bathroom. 

As the young doctor watched behind her, Moira set down her coffee and turned back to face the bench, planting both palms across the scattered paperwork with an academic’s zeal, carelessly nudging aside and displacing the vacated rolling stool. It was best not to interrupt the researcher when she had her claws into something that had captured her fascination, anyway. Angela’s problem was in good hands. She’d needed a break.

She counted herself quite lucky to have such a brilliant and clever colleague and senior scientist at Overwatch. This truly was a place of miracles, and she knew her work here would save thousands. The state-of-the-art facilities allowed her research to advance at a wonderful, steady pace, and the encouragement and enthusiasm from her eclectic colleagues created a truly uplifting atmosphere. Overwatch was where she belonged. 

She spent a few minutes walking about to stretch her legs, appreciating the after-hours quiet of the largely empty facilities around her as she finished her coffee. She wanted to discuss the problem with Doctor O’Deorain, give her a decent chance to take a crack at the solution and perhaps offer a few new ideas, but to catch her up to speed with Angela’s latest tweaks and adjustments was a task best left to solitude. Despite her amiability outside of the lab, Moira preferred to research in silence, and having the two of them sharing the same handwritten notes would simply be inefficient. They could both read much faster than they could explain to one another, and she was certain the solution was there, somewhere. 

She made herself another cup from the still-fresh pot Moira had left behind and returned once she'd allowed enough time. 

“...Have you considered alternate sources of power?” 

The woman didn’t look up as Angela entered the lab, asking the question as if she’d never left to begin with. 

“Alternate?” Angela asked, approaching Moira to see what particular set of notes she was on. “Fusion cells are the most efficient-per-weight battery available. Anything else will be simply too heavy, and even if I could source more power from a different type of battery, the weight alone would lower the efficacy of the Valkyrie’s flight systems…”

“Perhaps you could use something other than pre-charged power cells. A capacitor, for instance..." 

Angela frowned and set down her mug, peering at the papers on the bench. Moira had laid out before her the extended formulae of the nanobiological beam, the precise calculations involved in converting fusion power to reconstructive healing. The senior scientist reached behind her to lay an arm around Angela’s shoulders and draw her in close, setting a long, precise fingernail below the subformula describing the multiplicative effects of the beam on tissue regeneration. She certainly had a flair for the dramatic.

“This piece, here, is reversible,” she explained quietly, her head turning slightly but her eyes locked on the pages. “With careful engineering, you could utilize a self-recharging system, one that will accept power as well as dispense it.” 

“Reversible?” 

“Yes.” 

Angela frowned. How could she reverse the Caduceus beam? It only flowed one way. Was Moira expecting to tether the beam to something to draw power in? 

“That would still require a source,” she told the woman beside her. “The purpose of the suit is to be free and mobile on the battlefield, Doctor, it would render the agility pointless if I was forced to return to a base camp every few injuries to draw power from some central generator.”

Moira shook her head. 

“No base, Angela, and not a generator. You would have plenty of sources around you on the battlefield already. No need to leave...” 

Slowly her thin, inky fingertip slid across the formula, resting on its final result. Percentage of tissue regenerated. Her eyes flickered to her colleague with a studious curiosity, tapping gently, seeking to make the woman draw her own conclusions. Her nails dug earnestly into Angela’s far shoulder.

It clicked. Reverse the formula. If power could be converted through nanobiology into restorative healing, then the opposite could be engineered, as well. Moira was right. The mathematics worked. The Caduceus staff could be reversed, breaking down living tissue back into storable energy.

Angela stared in slow horror as the implications sank it. Moira’s smirk deepened into a dark, dark grin. 

“Now you’ve got it,” she said with a sinister enthusiasm. 

Angela quickly shook her head, staring with a slight disbelief at the leering woman so close beside her.

“Is that a joke, Moira? Please tell me you’re joking.” She had a dark sense of humor, after all, but the her suggestion was a little too real, too possible to be amusing. 

“No,” the woman replied, her eyes flashing with excitement. “Think. A perfect solution, is it not? Elegant, even. And useful…”

“--No,” Angela insisted sharply. “Absolutely not. That would...That would be abhorrent.” She forced the doctor’s insistent grip from her shoulders and backed away a step, just out of reach. “Drawing power f...from people? How could you even--? No. No.” 

She refused to consider it any further. It was not a joke, and it was not funny. Moira was proposing to convert people into power, to break down human beings to fuel her suit. She couldn’t help but perform the calculations in her head, picturing the sickening results. She had seen the incredible healing of the Caduceus staff in action; she knew it well. To reverse that, to deteriorate a body at such a terrible rate to refill and refuel her abilities...The idea was mortifying. 

Moira was undeterred. She straightened fully and faced her colleague, restlessly tracing the rim of the mug as she picked it up.

“Come now, Doctor Ziegler. This is war you study. Imagine the possibilities. Draw from your enemies to save your friends. Is there nothing more poetic for a battlefield angel?” 

“I am a medical doctor, Moira,” Angela argued sharply, “not a soldier." This was exactly the sort of idea she was frightened her research would become when she'd taken a job for a collective run by a military, and she would not allow it. "I am bound to heal and save by the oath I took. I will not take to the field of conflict prepared to destroy, I will not have my research and technology developed into weaponry, and I will not hear further of it. I am sorry, but if that is the only idea you can offer I must politely refuse.” 

Moira lowered the mug from her lips, her enthusiasm fading in the face of such ardent resistance. She studied the young woman before her with a faint distaste, but it faded quickly to a professional courtesy. Angela was disturbed to see disappointment in her eyes. She’d really meant it. She’d thought that degenerating the tissue of the living to save the dying was an acceptable solution.

“Very well.” Moira began to turn and leave. “I wish you luck with your endeavors, then, Doctor Ziegler. I am certain, however, that Commander Morrison may find my ideas a bit less…” She paused, glancing sideways. “‘Abhorrent,’ was it?”

“Don’t you dare!” 

Angela lunged for the woman, grabbing her sleeve and pulling her back. The unexpected jerk sent lukewarm coffee down the front of Moira’s lab coat and she stared down at herself in disgust. She glared at the impudent doctor clinging to her arm, her lip curling slightly, but Angela did not back down. 

“You will not speak of this idea to anyone, Doctor O’Deorain,” Angela demanded, a fire in her eyes to easily match and overpower Moira’s indignation. “If you say a word to Commander Morrison or Amari or even Reyes, I will leave.” 

The threat gave Moira pause, interrupting her anger with surprise. 

“Unhand me,” she ordered quietly. 

“Tell me you won’t say a word,” Angela countered, her grip tightening instead. “If anyone at all comes to me asking what damaging potential my work has, if I am handed any requests for the specifics of the Caduceus staff or if I find any of my things in even the slightest disarray, I will pack all of it up and be on the next flight back to Switzerland. I did not come to Overwatch to have my lifesaving work twisted into an abomination of suffering and death.” 

Silence fell. Moira gazed narrowly down at the white fabric bunched in her colleague’s determined grip. Angela straightened up, stepping closer, and stared unwaveringly up at her. This was not a fight she would lose. 

“...As you wish, Doctor Ziegler,” Moira said, her voice nearly a whisper. “This conversation will not leave your lab.” 

“I mean it,” Angela replied, releasing the woman’s arm. 

Moira shifted the nearly-empty mug from one hand to the other to smooth her the wrinkled sleeve primly, studying the setting stain down the front of her clothes.

“As do I.” She looked at the remaining coffee in the mug, and studied the bit that had splashed onto her hand and sleeve as well. “If you wish to continue to struggle beneath the restrictions of an ancient and outdated moral code, far be it from me to challenge you.”

She smeared the droplets from her skin onto a fresh patch of coat, then looked back at Angela steadily. 

“However, bear in mind the costs of holding yourself back so needlessly, Doctor. Every day you waste in the labs puzzling how best to optimize your technology, every day you reject a simple and clean answer over your ethics and morals is another day you’ve failed to join your allies on the battlefield. Another day your revolutionary technology collects dust in a case.”

“That’s enough." 

Angela regretted that she’d upset the woman so, but she didn’t want to hear this. She was well aware that her delays were causing the world great suffering. She was working as fast and as long as she could, as evidenced by the very fact that she had forgone sleep several nights this month alone to continue her focus, tonight included. While Moira's proposal certainly held potential to resolve her current problems, under no circumstances could she dare to attempt such a barbaric and cruel solution.

“Thank you for your help, and thank you for the coffee. I apologize for spilling yours.” 

Moira studied her a moment longer. 

“I’ll send you my dry-cleaning bill.” 

Angela hesitated, not quite sure how to respond. A ghost of a smirk graced the corner of Moira’s lips, however. It was enough to relieve the young doctor greatly. She didn’t want to burn a bridge with the brilliant woman, and she was grateful that her somewhat violent outburst had been forgiven. As much as she loved Overwatch and its facilities and freedoms, the militaristic tone of the collective did worry her. Perhaps a bit too much.

“I will think on other solutions for your power supply problem, as well,” Moira added. “Ones you may find more...tasteful. If you’ll excuse me,” she gestured to the mess she’d become. Angela nodded regretfully and offered an apologetic smile, then looked down at the notes scattered about the bench by her colleague. 

Moira started off, but paused at the door, all traces of their little disagreement gone from her measured, amiable expression. 

“I believe I hear my rabbits awakening, as well," she added, hoping to cement her forgiveness with a bit of lighthearted humor.

Angela’s smile widened. “Best not to keep them waiting.” 

“Do endeavor not to stay up all night again, Doctor Ziegler. A tired mind does little good for any of us.”

Moira disappeared into the hall. In the wake of her absence Angela realized she was more than a little shaken at the upsetting nature of the woman’s dark ideas, and the serious attempt she had made to sell them. She pushed it from her mind, trying not to think of the sort of carnage and unfettered destruction her reverse-engineered staff might cause on a battlefield, and endeavored to guard her work a little more jealously in the future.


End file.
